Dalat: A Market and a Crazy House

Surprisingly, until today, I hadn't missed the long sleeved shirts I shelved at my grandma's house when I first set off from there those many months ago. The temperate mountain climate coupled with the damp rainy season has left Dalat a little on the chilly side and I am completely unprepared. See, it's been months since I've seen a daytime temperature dip below thirty degrees (Celsius). In fact, in recent days, it's gone up as high as forty. My entire morning was spent shivering, covered with goosebumps and sniffly. Things improved a bit when I picked up an odd double hooded vinyl raincoat (apparently designed for a moto driver and passenger) at Cho Dalat, the market in the town square.

I always make it a habit to visit these markets because they are almost always teeming with interesting doo dads, local delicacies and photo opportunities. This is especially true with the one here. Breakfast consisted of stuffing myself sick on Vietnamese style Turkish delights (I got through half a bag before handing it off to a pair of boys who were following us around)

It's quite laid back here:


Basket of well behaved (they didn't look dead to me) chickens:


A shot of Ca Phe Sua Daa (Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk - ice not shown):

Anyway, Dalat has proven to be a delightful little town. It's how I'd picture Euro Disney if it fell into disrepair and got taken over by a bunch of commies (or at least that's the way I see it). The term the guidebook uses to describe the town is "kitschy." The place even has its own mini Eiffel tower:

On the outskirt of town, you can see that all the buildings are crammed tightly together:

We passed a kindergarten with a sign depicting "Uncle Ho" playing with the kids (creepy considering he's been dead for almost forty years now):

The levity of the above sign detracted by this one across the street that reminds the young folk to lay off their crack pipes:

I'm not too sure what we were thinking when we bypassed a historic train station for the "crazy house." Masterminded by a well heeled architect (her father was the president of Vietnam in the 80's), the crazy house is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland on drugs (possibly the reason for the prevalence of anti-drug propaganda around town):

A night in a themed room here runs around $25USD but all were vacant when we visited (to no surprise) . Even Hobbes wouldn't want to share a room with this tiger:


Plans were made to stay another day in this odd little town to the point where we had loosely arranged a pair of motorbikes. Of course, thanks to a drunken guest house employee and a 'roid raging Kiwi, our visit has been cut short. Jo and I were up in the room catching up on our journals (I was more inclined to a couple of games of Freecell) when Andrew came charging in, cursing under his breath. What happened was, earlier in the day, we had told the guest house owner that our windows had leaked through last night and asked if someone could mop it up. Somewhere along the line, something got lost in translation and the employee set to the task saw it as a grave insult. So later in the evening, he gets drunk with this Kiwi and gangs up on Andrew, who was checking his email downstairs. Tempers flared, expletives were exchanged and fists were raised. Nothing major came out of the whole fiasco, but seeing as this guy has access to a master key and there are no deadbolts on our door, we're going to have to sleep with one eye open tonight.

Travel Day: Dalat

A considerable amount of time has passed since I last woke up early enough for a sunrise, and given my current location (the guest house is literally sitting on the South China Sea), I decided it was time to bust out the old alarm clock (a borrowed cel phone). The buzzer faithfully went off at 5:30 as planned, giving Jo and I ample time to stumble down to a couple of vacant deck chairs in the pre-dawn darkness. We had originally meant to watch the sun slowly hoist itself out of the ocean but ended up losing ourselves in conversation, sharing stories of our past lives back home and of adventures in places unknown. It was too bad a slight drizzle and the damp chill of the early morning air convinced Jo to head back to the comfort of her nice warm bed, cutting our conversation short. I stuck around for another couple of hours, sheltered by a thatched straw umbrella and watched little wooden fishing boats pop up one by one along the orange and blue horizon.

Not having paid attention to the time, mid morning arrived earlier than anticipated, leaving hardly enough time for me to wake the other two up and pack up all my gear. With a little effort we managed to organize ourselves and check out just in time... to wait fifteen minutes for the bus to arrive late. To our disappointment, the nice big "40 seater" we were promised could barely fit 15 comfortably. Now, far be it for me to over generalize, but honesty in this country is in short supply and today was just another example of it. On a daily basis, we've seen prices fluctuate on the whims of business owners (price tags are virtually non-existent here), promises broken and the truth bent beyond what I'd consider an acceptable level. Anyway, we made it safely to the little mountain town of Dalat, but not without incident. A girl sitting a couple of seats to my left got her puke on for most of the five hour ride. In a last ditch effort from tossing my cookies, I resorted to breathing over a dab of Tiger Balm smeared on my index finger.

The rainy season clouds and precipitation followed us all the way up to Dalat so we crawled under our respective blankets and called it a day. It was actually quite nice.